Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/164

 She thought it over. It was with infinite difficulty that she thought of anything else. And in those thoughts what wonderful coloring this old gray world took on! It was a test, she thought, in her young ignorance. She would bear it well, but she would give her self a few days to revel in dreams—to look over her bars at the smiling fields beyond—to know the fulness of the joy that might be hers—before she turned away. She would not yield—she would not give up her people and her work and her gentle cloister friends. Somehow, it was a fixed conclusion with her that she could not have him and them, too. It was well enough to say that he would help her—no doubt he meant it. But she thought she knew herself too well to believe her work could be the vital thing it had been, if he came into her life as he wished to come. Now was the time to show the earnestness of the spirit in which she had joined the Third Order. Now was the time for a Sacrifice. Yet, could she give him up? Her problem seemed a vital one to her; her suffering was very real. She was quite capable of turning away the precious thing that had come into her life. She knew its sweetness, but she did not dream of its real worth.

In the mean time the days had gone by, and